Wind farm and solar park financing surged to a
record $41.8 billion in the third quarter, even though clean energy share
prices and the Europeaneconomyslumped, a report by research firm
Bloomberg New Energy Finance said on Thursday.
Asset financing
of utility-scale renewable energy projects was 27 percent lower in the third
quarter last year at $33 billion.
The increase in
financing was mainly driven by offshore wind investment. Three large offshore
wind farms in the
North
Sea
totaled more than
1 gigawatt in capacity and $6.3 billion in investment.
There were also
large financings for photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal and biofuel projects in
the United States, a geothermal plant in Indonesia and onshore wind projects inBraziland China, the report said.
"Over the
past three years we have seen extraordinary falls in the prices of clean energy
equipment -- wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels. As these figures
show, this has driven up installation rates and asset investment levels,"
Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in a
statement.
"However,
there is still not enough demand to soak up significant over-supply, so prices
and margins have remained under pressure and manufacturers' share prices are
being crushed," he added.
The average price
of PV modules has fallen by a third since autumn 2010 and by 70 percent since
mid-2008, while wind turbine prices have fallen by 20 percent since 2009, the
report showed.
This has made
renewable energy technologies more cost-competitive with fossil fuel power
sources but have been painful for supply chains.
However,
renewable energystockshave lagged fossil fuel energy and
wider global stocks over the past few months and the year to date,
underperforming as world shares slid on concerns about slow global economic
growth.
Wind power shares
have fallen sharply as the risk of further fiscal tightening weighed on a
sector which depends on government support.
Overall new
investment in clean energy -- including asset finance, equity raisings on public
marketsand venture capital and
private equity -- was $45.5 billion in the third quarter, up 16 percent on Q3
2010, the report said.
In the third
quarter, merger and acquisition activity in the clean energy sector rose 59
percent to $25.9 billion from Q3 2010.
Large
acquisitiondealsin the past three months included
EDF's purchase of 50 percent of its renewable energy arm EDF Energies Nouvelles
for $7.9 billion and Toshiba's takeover of Swiss electronic metering firm
Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion.